I

Connie figured she'd gone blind until she looked down and saw her body. There was a very bright kind of nothing around her, stretching out to endless horizons in every direction. Her numb skin quickly warmed up in the heat, but once she'd shrugged off the cold, the illusion of temperature vanished, and she felt oddly ungrounded, as though the air around her didn't exist. Whatever was under her feet kept her upright, but when she swept a hand down there, it passed straight through.

Was she dead? Place looked kind of like she'd always thought heaven would look, but a lot more lonely. She held her breath until her lungs screamed for air, whereupon she obliged them -- after all, the word count was still on her hand, shining like an emerald.

"Yo," she spoke into the communication tile. "You still there, priest guy?"

Her voice faded away, instantly muffled, because there was nothing for it to echo off. The loudest sound was her beating heart; the next loudest the unsteady ticking of the word count.

"Faust?" she said. "Where the fuck are we?"

He didn't reply. Her lips were dry and cracked from the rushing freefall. Taking a tentative step forward and finding herself able to walk, she set out in no particular direction. There had to be something out there.

She lasted five minutes before the lonely aura of the place crushed her. She couldn't tell up from down, back from forward, and when she yanked out a hair to put it behind her as a marker, it sank beneath her reach, twinkling as it fell away. This nothing was agony. Connie wasn't the kind of person who took easy refuge in her thoughts, and she generally liked to be as distracted as possible.

"Faust?" she called, and then hated herself for doing so, because it just made it lonelier when her words fell dead.

She had a jogging playlist on her phone. She took it out, put it on airplane mode, set the brightness to minimum, and pressed play. A pulsing drumkit made the perfect cushion to her worries, like a bedroll over hard ground, and without really intending to, she found herself running, comforted by the up and down motion of her feet as they plodded forward.

Hours passed, yet still Connie ran. She was a regular at the gym, and although she dedicated time in her workouts to taking a lot of selfies in the mirror, she put just as much into zoning out at the treadmill. She pressed repeat on the playlist again and again, unable to bear the void around her, until finally the battery on her phone died, and she was truly alone.

Her legs ached. Her throat was parched. She had a headache from squinting under the light. Having absolutely exhausted herself, she fell down, took off her jumper to wrap it around her eyes, and dozed off.

When she awoke, she was hungry, too, but there was some bump, a tiny dot of black, on the horizon. She walked towards it at a steadier pace, swaying on her feet, desperate for a drink, for company, to hear anything from anyone. It took forever for her to get even halfway, where she had to stop to rest again, her body pleading with her for more energy, more strength. The dot didn't appear to be moving. She pulled the jumper over her eyes again, desperate to dream of some companion, anyone, but her stomach rumbled insistently and she rose, angry, groggy, plodding her way onwards.

She walked. The worst part of it was that she couldn't die of thirst. The only thing keeping her upright was the word count, else she'd be happy to have fallen down and be done with it all. It was particularly frustrating, then, to finally reach the dot and discover a crumpled up priest in a white robe, water pistol dangling from his fingers, corpse perfectly preserved, eyes glistening with hatred.

"Lazy fucker," she said, bumping him with her foot. "Hey! Priest! Rise and fucking shine! Get up, man! Get up!"

Saheel lay still.

"Come on! You gotta know when to hit it or quit it, dude! Does now look like a time for quitting? Get the fuck up, man!"

Reluctant, she pressed her hand to his neck, and although his body was lukewarm, there was no trace of a pulse. So she did what anyone would do, and doused herself down with the pistol like it was a bottle of champagne, drinking from it greedily, feeling revived.

Just in case, she frisked his pockets, but he didn't have another rock on him, and he'd dropped the remote shortly after the explosion. What he did have was a working phone, which she swiped. Feeling a little guilty, she closed his eyes for him.

"Rest in peace, man," she said.

She turned, then, and took ten careful minutes to scan the horizon -- Faust was still out there somewhere. But there was nothing to break up the emptiness, and she felt more alone than ever, like she wouldn't have the strength to do more than lie beside Saheel and wait for the inevitable. She drank a little more, and as the cool water slid down her throat, she decided to believe that he couldn't be that far off. If he was too small to see, well, she'd just have to inflate him like a balloon.

"Remove the word count, all those in favour?"

1Y; INSUFFICIENT MAJORITY, INVALID PERMISSION

A beam of light shot out of her thumb, brighter even than the surroundings, then split into two, forking away at right angles, far away. She didn't have the strength to walk so far, especially if one direction led to Alan MacCain. Let him come to her.

"Remove the wordcount, all those in favour?"

1Y; INSUFFICIENT MAJORITY, INVALID PERMISSION

"Remove the wordcount, all those in favour?"

1Y; INSUFFICIENT MAJORITY, INVALID PERMISSION

"Remove the wordcount, all those in favour?"

2Y; INVALID PERMISSION

She gasped, feeling a little less lonely, a little more safe. He'd answered her call. No sooner had she broke out into a smile than her own thumb glowed, and she twisted it upwards with glee, not knowing or caring what he'd proposed.

2Y; INVALID PERMISSION

"Faust," she called into the communication tile.

But there came no reply, so instead, she said, "Take me to Faust!"

2Y; INVALID PERMISSION

They didnt stop voting, energy cannoning off into the distance like fireworks, but strain her eyes as she did, she couldn't see his energy coming from anywhere. What she did see was a four-legged warhorse, growing ever bigger and stronger in mass, charging towards her, with Alan MacCain astride it.

Her thumb glowed.

"Fuck, no, stop," she said.

1Y 1N; INSUFFICIENT MAJORITY, INVALID PERMISSION

Alan MacCain's warhorse grew bigger, new muscles tearing out of its skin until it was the size of an elephant.

Her thumb glowed again.

"Take the fucking hint," she growled. "Come on, man, I've gotta fight that thing!"

2N; INSUFFICIENT MAJORITY, INVALID PERMISSION

Receiving Connie's energy, Alan sprouted wings, the span of which must have been easily a quarter of a kilometer across, and with one powerful flap of them, he sprang towards her, closing the gap instantly.

The votes stopped coming, just in time. Connie unwrapped the Net of Lies at her hip.